Massive 1,100+ year old Maya site discovered in Georgia's mountains The archaeological site would have been particularly attractive to Mayas because it contains an apparently dormant volcano fumarole that reaches down into the bowels of the earth. People of One Fire researchers have been aware since 2010 that when the English arrived in the Southeast, there were numerous Native American towns named Itsate in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and western North Carolina. They were also aware that both the Itza Mayas of Central America and the Hitchiti Creeks of the Southeast actually called themselves Itsate . . . and pronounced the word the same way. The Itsate Creeks used many Maya and Totonac words. Their architecture was identical to that of Maya commoners. The pottery at Ocmulgee National Monument (c 900 AD) in central Georgia is virtually identical to the Maya Plain Red pottery made by Maya Commoners.
posted by ewagoner
on Dec 22, 2011 -
111 comments
Many listeners have written to us since our episode about Georgia Judge Amanda Williams, asking what ever happened to her. Did she face any consequences for the things we documented on our program? Yesterday, Georgia’s Judicial Qualifications Commission filed formal charges [PDF]
against her. The twelve counts include a number of things reported in our episode: sending away inmates for indefinite detention, jailing Charlie McCullough for 14 days for exercising his right to contest a drug screen, and using “rude, abusive, or insulting language” with individuals appearing before her. Local reporting from the
Altanta Journal-Constitution. Previously.
posted by gerryblog
on Nov 10, 2011 -
43 comments
In 1991,
Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of policeman Mark MacPhail in a Savannah, Georgia parking lot. Since then, seven of the nine prosecution eyewitnesses have
recanted all or part of their testimony, with some citing pressure from the police to make false statements. An exception is Sylvester "Redd" Coles, who made the initial report of Davis’s guilt, and is regarded by the defense as the chief suspect. New witnesses have sworn affidavits that Coles confessed the crime to them. An
array of figures have called for a stay of execution, including death-penalty supporters Senator Bob Barr and former FBI director William S. Sessions.
Today, the Georgia
Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency; barring
action from the District Attorney, Davis is
set to be executed by lethal injection tomorrow at 7pm. [
Previously]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94
on Sep 20, 2011 -
432 comments
This year Georgia (US state) passed an Arizona-style law to make life and employment harder on its undocumented immigrants, including about 425,000 agricultural workers. In the spring,
farmers argued that they would be unable to recruit new workers on time for the summer harvest with a sudden change in policy. Surprisingly, the Obama administration
did not step in to block the law taking effect.
The result is an estimated 46% of farms without enough workers and $300M of crops rotting in the fields. Georgia's govenor is
shocked.
posted by a robot made out of meat
on Jun 23, 2011 -
215 comments
When you think of
Hinduism, you probably don't think of suburban
Lilburn, Georgia, yet it is home to
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, at over 30,000 square feet the
largest Hindu
temple in the world outside of India. The
beautiful temple was assembled from 34,000 pieces of Turkish limestone, Indian pink sandstone, and Italian Carrara marble hand-carved by some 1500 craftsmen in India, then shipped to Georgia, where about 900 volunteers put in over a million man-hours to bring the architects' vision to
fruition (YT), at a cost of about US$19m.
[more inside]
posted by notashroom
on Aug 12, 2009 -
36 comments
What was so shameful and embarrassing to me, an American journalist whose own Moscow-based newspaper, The eXile, had just been driven out of existence [previously] by these same Kremlin bastards, is that Sasha was rightly frustrated. A Kremlin minder right and the Western journalists wrong? What has this world come to when the Kremlin has a better grasp of the truth than the free Western media?
How to screw up a war story: The New York Times at work
posted by Anything
on Jan 5, 2009 -
32 comments
Georgia and Russia: This is the most balanced and informative discussion I've seen since the invasion over three months ago (
MeFi thread). If you've been wanting to catch up, this essay and its many useful links are the way to go. The author,
Donald Rayfield, is professor of Russian and Georgian and knows both countries well. (Via
wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat
on Nov 18, 2008 -
12 comments
Georgia's going dry -- and we're not talking liquor stores. Record temperatures in Georgia and a long drought have left many Georgia cities wondering when the taps will run dry.
Some towns have only a few weeks of water left, while
rivers near Athens have nearly dried up. A
broken water main hasn't helped the problem, and some fear that the University of Georgia campus there may
shut down for lack of water. What's more,
Atlanta itself is already feeling the pressure, as Lake Lanier, a water source for 3 million residents,
falls by 1.5 feet per week and has only a three month supply remaining. While there have been
more severe (pdf) droughts in Georgia's history, rising population numbers have increased demand to now unsustainable levels.
posted by InnocentBystander
on Oct 13, 2007 -
75 comments
Genarlow Wilson, now 19, had his sentence reversed today and is expected to leave prison shortly. He served two years of his ten-year-sentence for engaging in consensual sex acts with a fellow teenager. Previously discussed
here.
posted by macrowave
on Jun 11, 2007 -
52 comments
Why is Genarlow Wilson in Prison? Genarlow Wilson sits in prison despite being a good son, a good athlete and high school student with a 3.2 GPA. He never had any criminal trouble. On the day he was to sit for the SAT, at seventeen years old, his life changed forever. He was arrested. In Douglas County he was accused of inappropriate sexual acts at a New Year’s Eve party. A jury acquitted him of the allegation of Rape but convicted him of Aggravated Child Molestation for a voluntary act of oral sex with another teenager. He was 17, and she was 15.
On July 1st, the new Romeo and Juliet law went into effect in Georgia for any other teen that engages in consensual sexual acts. That change in the law means that no teen prosecuted for consensual oral sex could receive more than a 12 months sentence or be required to register as a sex offender. But since the law was not changed retroactively, Genarlow Wilson must serve his
mandatory sentence of 10 years in prison, without parole.
posted by b_thinky
on Jan 25, 2007 -
179 comments
George Perry, a poor 19 year old farmer, set the world all-tackle record for large mouth bass in 1932, when he caught a 22 pound, 4 ounce bass in Montgomery Lake, Georgia.
It's a good story -- he was a poor farmer, he and his buddy only had one lure, it was during the Depression, and the fish was not caught for sport but for food. Furthermore, it was only weighed as an afterthought, after he was told that
Field and Stream had a big bass contest that paid a $75 prize. Amazingly, that record has stood for over 73 years. In the interim, sport fishing for bass has become widely popular around the world, a multi-billion dollar market served by its own
retail establishments,
tournament tour,
TV shows, corporate sponsorships, and legions of amateur fisher-men and -women, all trying to catch a bass bigger than the one George Perry caught back in 1932.
On Monday, after years of trying, a trio of San Diego fisherman hooked a 25 pound, 1 ounce fish that may have broken that record. (Includes picture of obscenely huge large mouth bass.) And they let it go, passing up potentially millions of dollars in endorsements.
And their decision to release the fish and not pursue the record is the real story here.
posted by mosk
on Mar 23, 2006 -
24 comments
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court held in a
5-3 decision (.pdf) that police may not search a home if any inhabitant of the home is present and objects to the search, even if another inhabitant consents. The Court drew what it acknowledged is a “fine line” – if a co-inhabitant is at the door and objects, the police can’t enter; but if the co-inhabitant is somewhere else – even in a nearby police car – and has no opportunity to object, then police don’t need his or her consent. Chief Justice Roberts issued his first written dissent, blasting the majority’s “random” and “arbitrary” rule and suggesting that the ability of police to respond to domestic violence threats could be compromised. The
zingers in the footnotes may reveal “strains behind the surface placidity and collegiality of the young Roberts court.”
posted by brain_drain
on Mar 23, 2006 -
88 comments
